Hacker News: Freeboots

New comment by Freeboots in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (Nov 2025)"

Freeboots — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 06:19:31 +0000

I guess it's not intensely gamified, but I have a couple friends at like 80-90% on Merlin. It's their excuse to travel and live abroad

New comment by Freeboots in "Show HN: Whittle – A shrinking word game"

Freeboots — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 21:06:09 +0000

The space counts and has to be removed. Rathe is not a word, nor is e, so youve got to find another way.

New comment by Freeboots in "Men hand over Bitcoins worth two billion euros to German federal police"

Freeboots — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 12:02:29 +0000

I think I read long ago that it takes almost 7% liquid market cap to trigger a major movement. Current market cap $800b, so if true then no, 2b wouldn't be enough.

I might be pulling 7% out of thin air though, it's been a long time since I was reading about crypto market manipulation.

New comment by Freeboots in "Men hand over Bitcoins worth two billion euros to German federal police"

Freeboots — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 11:58:05 +0000

Isn't that basically what happened with mtgox? Karpeles ended up on the hook for a dollar amount far less than the (then current) value of the crypto lost.

New comment by Freeboots in "Ask HN: 9-yo son wants to build a game, I'm lost. What can I do?"

Freeboots — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 11:59:38 +0000

Maybe look into Roblox. I don't actually know much/anything about Roblox, but I'm sure I've read about mods/games/whatever being built in it.

Possibly Minecraft too.

New comment by Freeboots in "Threads has passed 2M sign ups in the first 2 hours"

Freeboots — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 02:44:23 +0000

Won't block Threads? Oh god.

New comment by Freeboots in "Threads has passed 2M sign ups in the first 2 hours"

Freeboots — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 02:34:59 +0000

When was the name announced/leaked? They would have tried to acquire relevant domains beforehand, like the guy who owned meta.com (.co? .net?) and didn't even know it was Facebook wanting to buy it off him.

iirc he got a pretty good price, but nothing like if he'd known who the buyer was.

New comment by Freeboots in "Passwords Are Fine"

Freeboots — Wed, 05 Jul 2023 02:46:37 +0000

That's interesting, will have to check that out. People have mentioned online sms, which sounds pretty much like what I need.

But yeah re:Google Fi, $240/y to recieve maybe 3 sms is pretty bad imo. And unlimited is only within US.

New comment by Freeboots in "Passwords Are Fine"

Freeboots — Tue, 04 Jul 2023 12:59:59 +0000

I'm in a similar boat. Not so much service, but I move around internationally and change sims a lot. I dont even have a sim most of the time, I'm on wifi 99% of the time.

Don't want to pay outrageous fees for Google FI or the like, as literally all I need it for is to get into online banking (who have decided sms 2fa is now compulsory, without offering any other options like an authenticator app). I'm currently locked out of my bank, will have to fork out $50+ just to call them, then hope I can convince them I am who I say I am. Then do the dance again next year when they do it again.

Can we all just do authenticator apps?

New comment by Freeboots in "Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?"

Freeboots — Sat, 25 Mar 2023 09:50:11 +0000

- Regex

- SQL queries

- Bash scripts

- Specific code snippets, often for APIs

- Explaining code snippets

- Google Apps Scripts

- Pub Quiz questions (not very successful but some are ok)

New comment by Freeboots in "Bypassing Gmail's spam filters with ChatGPT"

Freeboots — Mon, 23 Jan 2023 07:18:36 +0000

Also in Reamde and later Fall. I forget exactly, but i think in Reamde they flood the internet with shit, and then some years later in Fall everyone has curated echo chambers of content, such that people signed up to different streams are basically living in different realities. Which i guess is just the logical conclusion of what we have now.

New comment by Freeboots in "Ask HN: Great text based games to play?"

Freeboots — Sun, 22 Jan 2023 03:17:27 +0000

Is Trill still sitting at the Keep well, refusing to be useful?

New comment by Freeboots in "Dear Chess World"

Freeboots — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 06:53:09 +0000

Now I want to watch the tournament footage to see if he ever chews gum...

New comment by Freeboots in "Let's Make Amazon into a Dumb Pipe"

Freeboots — Thu, 08 Sep 2022 07:09:13 +0000

You'd still be hitting tens of millions of apis to get their stock lists. In varying formats.

New comment by Freeboots in "Let's Make Amazon into a Dumb Pipe"

Freeboots — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 10:30:47 +0000

Wouldnt this require collecting (and maintaining) an enormous database of local retailers and their stock? Including duplicates. That seems... non-trivial.

New comment by Freeboots in "Ask HN: What game do you wish existed?"

Freeboots — Thu, 26 May 2022 10:16:08 +0000

Yup! Ultima is another great game from when they were still 'figuring out' open world games, before they became stale.

New comment by Freeboots in "Ask HN: What game do you wish existed?"

Freeboots — Wed, 25 May 2022 17:55:25 +0000

I have a MUD open right now in another window. I still play it because despite the lack of graphics, the freedoms of player interaction are interesting and far beyond whats available in modern open world games.

Attack a same side player? Sure! You might get warranted by the local militia (which may or may not have real players in it), but you can do it.

Pickpocket players? Sure. Change sides mid fight? Yep. Be a spy or mole for the enemy? Chase people down in 'safe zones'? Completely ignore PvP? All up to you.

Another thing i really like is looting. If you die, anyone can grab gear from your corpse. If the enemy get it, you're gear is gone. Theres no perma death in this particular Mud, but losing gear adds stakes to PvP. It also means gear is a real in game commodity, but also people dont get too precious about it. Die in the fight? Reequip asap and get back out there.

New comment by Freeboots in "Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content"

Freeboots — Tue, 17 May 2022 15:00:19 +0000

Same. I keep the previous episode of a show until i get the next, to remind me what shows im watching and where im up to, but typically dont hang onto anything. These days the cost of downloading something again is less than the cost of hanging onto it just in case i maybe want to rewatch (usually years later).

New comment by Freeboots in "Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)"

Freeboots — Sat, 14 May 2022 08:48:49 +0000

I never noticed that! Did they really change it to gold?

New comment by Freeboots in "Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)"

Freeboots — Sat, 14 May 2022 08:48:08 +0000

Oh thats interesting, cheers